The Trump people spent less than half the money compared to Clinton, and had millions fewer feet on the ground, yet easily won an election in a stunner of a lifetime.

~~~~

But it’s more than just about Donald Trump. It’s about a novice political campaign neglected by the hierarchy of the Republican party, and using never before seen digital data techniques to create target rich strategies directed at flipping certain vulnerable democratic states (electors) to win a presidential election. It was also about using the electoral system to its maximum benefit based on confidential proprietary algorithms and the use of internal campaign data. Along the way they were laughed at by practically all major media sources and mocked as amateurs just wasting everyone’s time. Here’s how it was done, the biggest upset in U.S. history.

Brad Parscale had been associated with various Trump companies since 2010. In July he was brought on board to be the “digital director”, working closely with the Trump campaign as the man behind President-elect Donald Trump’s digital operational plan to reach out to disenfranchised voters.

Parscale’s skill set was invaluable to Trump as the presidential contender battled to defeat Hillary Clinton on election day Nov. 8, 2016. It’s also why Parscale’s firm — San Antonio, Tex.-based Giles-Parscale Inc. — was paid an eye-popping $8.4 million by the Trump campaign just in July alone for developing what it called project Alimo.

Most of that money, about 90 percent by Parscale’s count, was spent on digital ads. Parscale’s expertise is using data to find voters who will relate to Trump’s message and tailoring ads to those prospective supporters.

“There’s a thousand ways to find people now,” he was quoted as saying, and that’s the direction we are moving.

Parscale explained that the campaign’s “data operation” ran everything from television ad buys to budget choices to where the campaign was on the ground, which he said was a first in American politics.

He also explained that they built models which gave the campaign the ability to zero in on undecided voters and “persuadable targets” like Pennsylvania and Michigan, which the campaign focused on after the data research revealed that Trump had a better chance there than the polls showed.

Trump’s plane flew up and down the east coast and rust belt areas in the last three days before the election, visiting and revisiting particular states that Clinton’s people thought were locked up. Interestingly Parscale’s data said otherwise, even though most of the media continually made fun of the strategy. In the end, every one of those states flipped to Trump on election day and in stunning fashion.

“We started to see that move our direction,” Parscale said. “And by the Friday before the election, I was 95% sure that we were going to win 305 electoral votes.”

“The data doesn’t lie, and that’s the beauty about data.”

Lastly, Donald Trump built the whole apparatus with his own funds, he owns it all. It this means Trump could sell the statistical data program to other campaigns in the future or use it to foment a larger fringe political movement for himself or close alies.